My Amazon Reviews: Steve Earle "Copperhead Road"

The D.E.A.'s Got a Chopper in The Air
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Steve Earle had two well received and critically acclaimed country albums under his belt, but he had been saying all along that he didn't consider himself a country singer. Being a big lefty liberal wasn't endearing him to the staid conservatism of the Music Row establishment. With these worlds colliding, Earle went all in for his third album, 1988's "Copperhead Road." MCA Nashville and MCA Los Angeles were so befuddled by it that they resurrected the old UNI Records imprint to try and find a bridge between the two worlds. And for his part, Earle hit a park on "Copperhead Road" that took him almost a decade to recover from.

The album is, at its absolute best, a perfect ahead of its time blend of rockin' with the new country crew that Earle was initially batched in with. Rock as hard as he wanted to, but he couldn't escape that southern drawl and many of the lyrical tropes of the genre. At the same time, the guitars, drums and overall sound were closer to John Mellencamp than George Strait. The epic title song is all but a Mellencamp record with a tougher lyrical punch; a story about a moonshiner's son who comes back from Vietnam with a bag of pot plants and post traumatic stress disorder. With that kind of content, it's no wonder that the Suits in Nashville didn't know what the fox to do with him. The same with the unknown soldier who is angry about how his Grandfather came home a hero, but he's disabled, standing alone on a runway in San Diego and "there's nobody here, maybe know body knows" (in "Johnny Come Lately").

Earle could still do convincing country, like the gunslinger's lament "Devil's Right Hand" and the pedal steel ballad "Once You Love." All the same, Earle had reached a crossroads, personally and musically. "Copperhead Road" remains his commercial apex and is among his best albums, but his decline into addiction and his overall distrust of the music industry left him stranded until 1995 and "Train a'Comin'." But for the sheer raw power of a battle waged and won, Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" remains a must listen.

     

My Amazon Reviews: David Broza "Night Songs: The Unpublished Poetry of Townes Van Zandt"

 Twilight With Townes
3 Out Of 5 Stars

I have been a fan of David Broza for quite some time, including seeing him perform. He's an Israeli folk singer with a husky, sensual voice who's a major star over sees and a cult following stateside. He's done albums in English, Spanish and Hebrew, and "Night Dawn" is his first English Language album in many years. It comes with its own peculiar back story. As it turns out, Broza was a close friend of the late Townes Van Zandt, whose best known songs include the classic "Pancho and Lefty." Prior to his death, Van Zandt had approached Broza about working on an album with Townes' lyrics and David's music, but Van Zandt passed before the project came to fruition. These were the last lyrics/poems Van Zandt had written.

Broza held on to the lyrics, which at one time were being considered for an all-star tribute to Townes where other luminaries would each take a poem and complete a song. That project sputtered and stalled and never came to be, and finally, in 2010, Broza approached Van Zandt's family/estate about completing the album he and Townes had started in 1994. "Night Dawn" is the result, and it's a pretty good effort. There are some nice fits, like "Soul to Soul" and "Night Dawn/Silver Dollar." Broza's guitar style as a flamenco man doesn't always match the sadness in Van Zandt's words, like the divorce of "Southern Cross" and or a downer like "The Deer" (with this couplet "hard times lead, worse times follow...").

For the most part, "Night Dawn" is a good match between kindred spirits. Broza's rich voice infuses the words with the kind of emotional weight of Townes' intent. Like Steve Earle's tribute of Van Zandt covers ("Townes"), Broza shows and obvious deep love for his friend and the music he was entrusted with. While the quality of the songs is a little uneven, the heart is in the right place.